I'm not sure the above would work, since I suspect CF won't allow the list view to be shown in another screen than the media...will see.

09-22-2010, 12:24 AM

RipplingHurst

Okay, the above would work fine, but without any transparency. Also there is no way to load the list of songs anywhere else. The 3/5 song play list needs to be together with the visualization/album art screen. I can't see a way around this.

Ignore the surroundings and the absence of text, the buttons do work fine. I linked the library button to the library, no problems, the playlist button to the old OEM skin. It opens, displays everything, buttons work fine, but no text is displayed and the links inside the list box (i.e. click on the 3rd song shown and it loads, etc.) won't work. It's all hard coded.

09-22-2010, 01:32 AM

Chester

RH, I hope you have padded the walls around your computer, it looks like you might have spent a few days beating your head against them!!

I like what you are building, it is quite a different take on the usual CF skin style, and its refreshing to see someone come at it from a completely different angle.

Looking forward to seeing how you go, keep us informed, its looking good!

09-22-2010, 01:54 AM

RipplingHurst

Heh, indeed, thanks!

I need a break, and breathe some fresh air. My head hurts. :)

09-22-2010, 10:00 AM

Machinehead

I also like the direction you're taking with the skin. It seems like every CF 3.1 skin is a spin off of another skin and none of them are daylight viewable.

A couple of comments:

1) No clock eh? While I agree that there doesn't need to be a clock on every page, it would be nice to have it on the main page at the very least. I don't wear a watch and like to know what time it is in the car.
2) No quick access audio controls. While I do have a device to control pause/play, next track, previous track and volume, there are times when that device doesn't work and I have to resort to the on-screen controls.

Also, will it be possible to re-assign the main buttons? Like replace the Hulu button with a Sirius button or whatever?

09-22-2010, 10:22 AM

matt11601

Looking really good.

09-22-2010, 11:20 AM

RipplingHurst

Thanks for your comments and input!

1. Yeah, no clock, sorry. That's one thing that really annoys me on the screen. It's going to be easily accessible though, by clicking on the track info bar (i.e. clicking on the song title at the top and a drop down window will show clock and volume controls).

2. You have a play/pause button on screen at all times. The FF/RWD buttons are at the top, on each side of the song title at the top. Volume buttons only on the drop down window, together with the clock. Since the song title is always displayed, the volume/clock controls should be available quickly.

Yes, you can reassign the left bar buttons. But you'd have to edit the skin file, I would give away the instructions together with the possible commands (plugins are okay, library is not, also you can't assign a button to external apps). I don't think they can behave like the main buttons on the main menu screen (where you click and hold and reassign them to whatever you like) but I'm going to try.

09-22-2010, 01:14 PM

Machinehead

Quote:

Originally Posted by RipplingHurst

2. You have a play/pause button on screen at all times. The FF/RWD buttons are at the top, on each side of the song title at the top. Volume buttons only on the drop down window, together with the clock. Since the song title is always displayed, the volume/clock controls should be available quickly.

Ah ok, it wasn't clear from the pics on how those functions were integrated.

10-14-2010, 02:12 AM

RipplingHurst

Some updates are in order. I decided to give a sneak preview of what's to come. I'm a little scared of the changes on 3.2 now, so I'm not sure what's going to survive from this. So I want your feedback now, please. There's a lot work to be done, but I feel the main menu, trackinfo, menu, and media player skins are set.

I still have to do the nav screens, radio and phone screens, settings and all the remaining dialog boxes (yes/no/etc.).

Some more screenshots with more detailed explanation on how I designed extra info to be out of the way as much as possible, but at the same time easily accessible. The Top header is on as much as possible, as usual.

So basically the hole empty space is actually a big shortcut button for a pop up menu with 6 buttons. In addition, when the main screen is not being shown, you can click on the menu icon on the right of the main title in the header, so you have two ways to access it. You don't need to scroll the main menu too much or at all to find your six most important functions, whatever they are: NAV, Phone, Traffic, Settings, Exit, a plugin, anything really is just one click away - CF won't allow dynamic buttons on this screen, so to change them, you have to manually edit the screen, but it's easy. Convenient and safe functionality, if you ask me.

Also the left side menu buttons behave just like the regular horizontal six menu buttons CF displays since it's inception. Just there's one less button available. Also for functions that do not demand too much screen real state, like weather, mixer, radio, etc. you can keep them on display at all times. Convenient and safe, less time to look for what you need, returning to the main menu and selecting phone, nav or whatever.

The voice button is actually activated by a physicial button, as it should. Why reach for the screen for a simple voice command, like play, pause, you may as well just press the right button. Anyway, I left an invisible big button on the bottom of the screen, touch it, and while the system mutes waiting for a command a pop up message appears "say a command" or whatever.

I think the screen above should be self explanatory. Big album art, big visuals, without losing the ability to display the current playing list. With some mods you can display 6-7 lines of info there, for now, there's 4 lines at the standard size, no compromises with font size for now.

Note the favorites button is gone, nobody seems to care for it anyway, as my poll proved. :lol:

Note that the above track info dialog does not hide automatically, I turned off that feature, so that it can stay showing extra info as long as you want. To hide it, just click on the main title on the header. Also, the connection button works, but the connected green icon is not updated here. CF does not expect people to move things around too much, you know, so I have to figure this out still.

The main menu though is tricky to show. It looks like it belongs to an ancient code in there reminescent of CF 1.4 or whatever, there's no way to turn off the autohide feature as far as I can tell reading the SDK. So it stays on for like 4-5 seconds and then it's gone, that's why I had to take a cell phone pic to show it (check on the video though).

Note that there's a lot of small mistakes here and there, alignments need to be tweaked, icons that should be blacked out are not (not all of them are available on the SDK, I created my own "user icon"), playlist numbers on the media screen are not showing (I'm having a lot of trouble controlling font colors), so it's still a work in progress.